


Kindred Spirits

by Verecunda



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Fluff, Humour, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 04:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18887089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verecunda/pseuds/Verecunda
Summary: One romantic soul recognises another.





	Kindred Spirits

**Author's Note:**

> I'm an old-fashioned girl, with old-fashioned tastes. I sees Ben Willbond and Mat Baynton playing characters in period costume, I makes em kiss.

In the very wee hours of the morning, all was quiet at Button House. The living occupants had been asleep for some time, worn out after another day struggling to keep the place from collapsing into sawdust about their ears, while the dead, too, had drifted off to their own rooms. All save the Captain, who made it his habit at this time make a thorough reconnoitre of the territory before turning in himself. With his stick tucked smartly under his arm, he patrolled each floor in turn, leaving no darkened room or corridor unexamined. If there was one thing that his command of the Chumley-on-the-Wold Home Guard had taught him, it was that security was all.

Back on the ground floor, his rounds brought him - by way of a detour that avoided Jemima’s pantry - back to the main living room where he had started. Nothing disturbed the heavy silence but the distant cry of an owl out in the grounds, and all the small grumbling noises of an old house in the middle of the night. Satisfied that all was in order, he left Robin snoring in his usual place on the fireside rug, and headed upstairs to catch his own well-earned forty winks.

He was just making his way along the corridor to his room, when out of the darkness came a sound - a deep sigh, the voice of an individual lost in deepest melancholy. With a start (because even for a ghost, hearing such a sound in a dark corridor one was pretty sure was empty just a moment ago can be quite unnerving), the Captain looked urgently around, and was just able to make out a figure sitting at the nearest window, half-hidden in the shadows. Mustering his courage, he brandished his stick and said, in the most authoritative tone he could manage under the circumstances:

“I say! What do you think you’re doing, skulking about the house at this time of night? Show yourself!”

Another sigh - more of a huff, really - then the figure turned, and as a stray beam of moonlight illuminated its features, the Captain’s tension instantly gave way to irritation.

“Thorne! What the bally hell do you want?”

Thomas drew himself up. “ _I_ , sir?” he cried, voice reaching a pitch of indignation that was painful to the Captain’s ears. “What do _I_ want? Is it too much to ask for a mere modicum of peace and quiet so that I might collect my thoughts?”

“Do you have to collect them outside _my_ room?”

“Where else am I to do it? This is my brooding spot!”

“Thomas, the whole house is your brooding spot.”

“Oh!” Thomas made a noise that was an impressive mingling of a moan and a sob, and looked away. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. When one has so many causes for sorrow as I—”

“Look, if you’re still banging on about that infernal eclipse reading, I won the vote fair and square. If you disagree with the result, I suggest you take it up with the others.”

But Thomas dismissed this suggestion with an extravagant gesture, presumably intended to convey scorn. “Philistines! They have no appreciation for the lyrical arts. I mean, can you believe that Mary, requesting a _third_ option as to who should conduct the address?”

“Well, quite,” agreed the Captain, rather ruffled at the memory. “The blasted impudence of it. I have a jolly good mind to—”

Here, quickly, he cut himself off, rather than get drawn into yet another discussion on the subject. Frankly, he was surprised that Thomas was still sulking about it. It wasn’t like him to hold onto a grievance this long - usually because he quickly found some other grievance to take its place. If he didn’t know better, he’d almost swear that this was some sort of subterfuge on Thomas’ part, a mere _ruse de guerre_ to keep him in talk…

“Now see here, Thorne, have you just come up here to complain, or do you actually have something to say?”

Thomas opened his mouth - then, to the Captain’s astonishment, snapped it shut again. His face assumed an expression of utmost sorrow - the same expression, unfortunately, that made him look less profoundly tortured and more like a lost puppy - and turned his head away.

“No,” he said, holding up one hand as his voice cracked. “No, you’re quite right. It is not my place to foist my woes upon another.”

“That would be a first,” muttered the Captain.

But Thomas was, thankfully, too far gone to hear him: “The torments of my heart are my own to grapple with, and I have no right to keep anyone else from their rest. I will take my leave at once. Pray pardon me.”

He leapt to his feet, and made every appearance of leaving, but in the same moment, the Captain’s fragile patience snapped and he barked, “Good Lord, man, just come out with it!”

At once, Thomas turned back, visibly brightening. “Are you sure?”

Knowing he was sure to regret this, the Captain sighed, “Yes.”

“One doesn’t like to impose, you know.”

“Just get on with it.”

“Well…” Thomas pressed a trembling hand to his chest and leaned in in a confidential manner. “The thing is, I do - on occasion - fear that the beauteous Alison is not quite receptive to my overtures of love - that she does not wholly reciprocate my adoration.”

“Really?” said the Captain drily.

This was precisely the wrong thing to say for one looking for a quiet life, for at once Thomas snapped back into his usual mode of theatrical despair. “Oh, what’s the use?” he cried, gesturing in a billow of Regency shirtsleeves. “I am doomed to be alone in my sufferings for all time! I had hoped, sir, that I might find a sympathetic ear from _you_ of all people, but alas—”

“From _me_?” spluttered the Captain. “What in blazes made you think I would be sympathetic to your dramatics?”

“Well,” said Thomas, “we are kindred spirits of a kind, are we not? Both inspired by matters oratorical (albeit to rather unequal degrees) — both romantic souls, after our own fashion.”

A strange jolt went through the Captain, and he gave his stick a warning swipe under Thomas’ nose. “Now look here, Thorne! If you mean to imply that there’s any similarity between me, an officer of His Majesty’s Armed Forces, and you, some posturing prima donna—”

Disconcertingly, Thomas only smiled. Even more disconcertingly, it wasn’t even a mocking smile, but something quite kind.

“Oh, come, sir. Did you suppose your admiration of young Adam - to say nothing of that strapping young labourer, and indeed our very own Michael - had passed unnoticed? Did you suppose I, afflicted as I am with an unparalleled sensibility to Cupid’s whims, had not perceived your longing?”

Actually, the Captain hadn’t thought that Thomas Thorne noticed much that went on three inches beyond his own nose, but he was too thunderstruck to say so. 

“You… you did?”

“Indeed. Well, actually I heard Julian telling Pat about the builder, but I _did_ notice the rest.”

“Ah.” He fell silent, hopelessly at a loss. The thought that any of the others - especially Julian - had noticed his proclivities made the Captain feel highly uncomfortable, his position too exposed. It would never do to show it, however, and he tried to cover it by clearing his throat and squaring his shoulders.

Thomas’ eyes gleamed. “Come. There’s no cause for blushes here, my dear sir. Nature’s bounties are, after all, amply bestowed between man and woman alike. Why, I myself am by no means indifferent to the sight of a handsome young buck.”

“You?” said the Captain, incredulous. “But you’ve done nothing but moon over Alison since she arrived. And I remember very well how you mooned over the late Lady Heather in her younger days, too.”

“Well?” said Thomas, with an impatient gesture. “Did not Jove himself burn for Europa and Ganymede in equal measure?”

“I don’t know,” replied the Captain, whose propensity for dozing off in Latin lessons had rather put paid to any future career as a Classics scholar. “Did he?”

“ _Yes_ ,” said Thomas, with more than a hint of exasperation. “Yes, he did.” Recovering himself, he stepped forwards in one fluid movement, until the two of them were standing almost toe-to-toe. If the Captain still had a pulse, he was sure it would’ve leapt.

“Oh, I say—”

Thomas’ smile quirked. “Nor am I indifferent to the sight of a gentleman in regimentals.” He reached out, and brushed the tips of his fingers along the ribbon bar above his breast pocket. The Captain swallowed, hard.

“I — I had no idea.”

Thomas shrugged. “Well, one does try to exercise a little delicacy for poor Fanny’s sake, but I think it’s safe enough between us.”

“Just so, but—”

“And I suspect you are not exactly indifferent to me, either. I flatter myself I have felt your gaze upon me once or twice over the years.”

The Captain didn’t deny it, though in all honestly it was hardly setting the bar very high. When he’d first joined the ghostly ranks of Button House, the only other male companionship (the cellar corps always excepted) had been Humphrey, who was more often than not lacking a head, and Robin, who he wasn’t sure was human in the strict scientific sense of the word. Given those circumstances, it was probably inevitable that his attention should have wandered to Thomas every so often. Though if the last few months had proven anything, it was that his taste generally ran towards strong, capable, authoritative chaps, chaps with some actual substance to them. Not highly-strung dandies who didn’t know the meaning of discipline or hard work — even if they did have thick curls practically made for winding one’s fingers through. Or eyes so wide and dark a fellow could easily lose himself in them. Or long, fine limbs that so often sprawled with languid grace across the nearest settee or window-seat…

Awkwardly, he looked down. “Yes. Well. There may be something in what you say.”

“Just so!” cried Thomas, and the Captain could swear he had inched closer. “Here we both are, you and I, two souls trapped in this same place of limbo for all eternity, both all too familiar with the pangs of hopeless longing, the ache of desire that can never be returned. Wouldn’t our anguish be relieved if we were simply to…”

And before the Captain quite knew where he was, Thomas was extremely, infinitesimally close and - _oh, that had happened_ \- his lips brushed against the Captain’s own. A mere - well, there was really no other way to describe it - a mere ghost of a touch, yet the Captain positively felt a flush of warmth pass through him.

Then, barely had it happened, than Thomas was leaning away, leaving him dazed and blinking.

“Oh. I — oh. Jolly good.”

Thomas smiled widely. Then, all of a sudden, he threw back his head and burst out: “ _We spirits that wander this mortal plane/Afflicted still by love’s exquisite pains—_ ”

“Oh, Lord.” Much to his own surprise, he said it with rather less irritation than he usually felt when Thomas got going. Still, he couldn’t in good conscience allow this recitation to go on any longer. This called for drastic measures. So he shut Thomas up by the best means available to him — by kissing him again.

Somewhere at the back of his mind, he wondered what the others would have to say when they inevitably found out about this, but he found he didn’t really care too much about that for the moment. He and Thomas certainly made for an unlikely partnership, but many a great victory had been won against much unlikelier odds before now.

And, after all, they had all eternity to work things out.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [brooding](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22528771) by [beetlejosh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetlejosh/pseuds/beetlejosh)




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